Considering a programmable logic device (PLD) as one example of an integrated circuit device, as applications for which PLDs are used increase in complexity, it has become more common to design PLDs to include specialized processing blocks in addition to blocks of generic programmable logic resources. Such specialized processing blocks may include a concentration of circuitry on a PLD that has been partly or fully hardwired to perform one or more specific tasks, such as a logical or a mathematical operation. A specialized processing block may also contain one or more specialized structures, such as an array of configurable memory elements. Examples of structures that are commonly implemented in such specialized processing blocks include: multipliers, arithmetic logic units (ALUs), barrel-shifters, various memory elements (such as FIFO/LIFO/SIPO/RAM/ROM/CAM blocks and register files), AND/NAND/OR/NOR arrays, etc., or combinations thereof.
One particularly useful type of specialized processing block that has been provided on PLDs is a digital signal processing (DSP) block, which may be used to process, e.g., audio signals. Such blocks are frequently also referred to as multiply-accumulate (“MAC”) blocks, because they include structures to perform multiplication operations, and sums and/or accumulations of multiplication operations.
For example, PLDs sold by Altera Corporation, of San Jose, Calif., as part of the STRATIX® family include DSP blocks, each of which includes a plurality of multipliers. Each of those DSP blocks also includes adders and registers, as well as programmable connectors (e.g., multiplexers) that allow the various components of the block to be configured in different ways. In each such block, the multipliers can be configured not only as individual multipliers, but also as one larger multiplier.
As the precision of a multiplier increases, its interface requirements (i.e., the number of inputs) increase proportionally to the increase in precision, but its arithmetic complexity (i.e., the number of gates in the multiplier) increases proportionally to the square of the increase in precision. For example, if the precision of a multiplier, as implemented in one of the aforementioned STRATIX® PLDs, is increased from single precision to double precision (i.e., by a factor of two), its interface requirements also increase by a factor of two (from 18 bits to 36 bits), but its arithmetic complexity increases by a factor of about four.